


just know where to find me (i'll have loved you all along)

by notcaycepollard



Series: out of time [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, I found a picture of young clark gregg and it made me FURIOUS, Time Travel, because he is so tiny and handsome, hello these babes are star-crossed lovers for real okay, tiny baby deer Phil Coulson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 12:55:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5164574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She needs to refresh herself on Protocol 618, but she's pretty sure that although it doesn't outright say "in the case of unexpected time travel, don't stay in the guest room of the Director of SHIELD's twenty-five-year-old version of himself", the general gist of the instructions could be read as meaning that in spirit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just know where to find me (i'll have loved you all along)

It's a totally routine mission. They're not even tracking down a new Inhuman. They're just on the trail of someone who's appeared on their radar with some  _very_ nice tech, and Daisy kind of wonders why she's even bothering. She doesn't need to be on this, really; Fitz and Mack have got it, and she's just along for the ride. But Coulson is showing Price around the base, and Daisy  _really_ hadn't wanted to be there, so instead she's in the back of a van, listening to Hunter and Fitz bicker, and god, she's so bored of this.

"Have they gotten worse?" she mutters to Mack, and he laughs, nods, rolls his eyes. "Hey- hey, isn't that who we're after?"

"Yeah, that's him," Mack agrees, sits forward. "What the hell kind of tech  _is_ that?"

"Looks home-made," Fitz says, forgetting his argument with Hunter. "Not sophisticated enough to have come out of HYDRA's labs. Can we get in closer?"

"Sure," Daisy says, "I'll just use this new dwarf I totally didn't steal from you."

"You know it's only a prototype," Fitz tells her. "It's not ready for a  _reason_."

"Yeah, okay, whatever. It's useful." She directs the drone in closer, and Fitz and Mack squint at the screen.

"You reckon that could be-" Mack says, and Fitz nods.

"Yes, see that there? I think it's a quantum field generator. Quite impressive, really, I've not seen one reduced to that size. I'm surprised he'd be able to create this through garage tinkering."

"Guys," Daisy interrupts. "What is it."

"A portable Einstein-Rosen bridge generator," Fitz says, at the same time as Mack says, "a wormhole device." Daisy blinks between the both of them.

"Portal tech?" she asks cautiously, and Mack nods. "Seriously? This could be the way to get Will back, guys, we have to get our hands on this."

"Okay, have you got a suggestion for  _how_?" Fitz says, and Daisy shrugs.

"Shoot him with an icer, ask questions later?"

"Oh sure," Hunter grouses. "When  _I_ do it, it's all "what are you doing, Hunter", and "you've got to resolve your anger issues, Hunter", but when  _you_ suggest it, it's a  _plan_."

"Shut up, Hunter," Daisy orders, pulls out her icer. "Okay, I'm going in- oh, shit, guys, what's the dwarf doing?"

"Look, I  _told_ you it was a prototype," Fitz says grumpily as the shielding fails. Their target looks up, catches sight of it, starts fiddling with his machine, and then there's a pulsing bubble of light around him, and when it fades, he's gone.

"Huh," Hunter says. "Where'd he go?"

"Portal tech, Hunter, that means  _portals_ ," Daisy replies, opens the van door. "He left in a hurry, the machine's still there, let's go take a look." She's tempted to poke it with a stick. She doesn't, because she's kind of learning here, but she's  _really tempted_.

Half an hour later, she's even more tempted. "Guys," she says. "Can we not just load it up into the van and take it back to the lab? You could scan it, use the holotable, we could not be standing around in this industrial carpark, it would be all-round a good time."

"It's unstable," Fitz says, "moving it might have unforeseen consequences, it's a good concept but I don't think our guy knew what he was dealing with. The quantum generator's in a state of flux that's a wee bit concerning, we need to build more shielding before we can safely transport it."

"Great," Daisy groans. "Mack, come on, tell me you can do this."

"In a hurry to get back?" Hunter asks, raising one eyebrow. "I'd have thought, with Dragon Lady on the base, you'd be glad to be out of there."

"Hmmm," Daisy says, frowns, shoves her hands in her pockets. "I just want to get back, that's all. I'm  _bored_." She pulls out her phone to text Jemma, see how the base is doing in their absence, and dimly hears Fitz say, "oh, that's  _interesting_ , I think it also acts as a time dilation device," and then she's wrapped in a ball of light, shimmering around her, and fuck, she just totally got caught in a portal, didn't she, because that's the kind of thing that  _happens_ when they find untested wormhole devices in an industrial parking lot.

The light fades, and she pulls herself together, stands up out of the crouched stance she'd taken almost without thinking, looks around. Same parking lot, dark now in gathering twilight. No Mack, no Fitz, no Hunter. No surveillance van. No portal tech. Uh oh.

"Stop where you are," a familiar voice says, "I'm an agent of SHIELD, stand down, I'm here to take you into custody, please put your hands where I can see them." She blinks into the glare of a flashlight shining bright on her, squints at the figure facing her.

"Coulson?" she says, "why'd you follow me?" and there's an intake of breath as he steps closer.

"How do you know my name?" he asks, shifts the flashlight beam out of her face, and when her eyes adjust to the darkness, she does a perfect double-take, because it's Coulson, of course it's Coulson, but it  _isn't_.

"What year is it?" she asks, and he frowns.

"It's 1989," he tells her, "who  _are_ you?" and god, yeah, playing with untested wormhole devices, Daisy is in trouble now.

 

+

 

"Look," she says, "Coulson, you're in SHIELD, do you remember Protocol, uh..."  _Shit_. Why can't she remember the relevant protocol for this? She's got the SHIELD manual on her phone, she can find it, it's fine. "One moment," she tells him, skims through the manual as fast as she can. "Protocol 618?" she tells him, triumphantly, and he frowns some more.

" _Time travel_?" he asks skeptically, and she just nods. "You're an agent of SHIELD?" he asks, and she nods again, bites her lip.

"I can't tell you anything else," she says, "you know that, right?"

"To maintain the integrity of the future," he agrees. "But- you can probably tell me your name, right?"

"Da-" Daisy starts, pauses.  _Oh_. No, she can't, she can't tell Coulson  _anything_. She shouldn't even be looking at him. She shouldn't  _be_ here. "Darcy," she says instead, and resists the urge to stare.

"Right," he says, giving her the look that's always, always said he doesn't believe her at all. "I'm Phil Coulson, but you know that already, which, I would really  _love_ to know how that happens, but... Protocol 618. What do you need, Agent?"

What does Daisy need? Right now, she needs something to eat and time to sit down and gather her thoughts, and then access to whatever version of the internet SHIELD has in  _1989_ , and hopefully, a really smart scientist whose brain she can pick. Except, she realizes, she can't just walk right into SHIELD headquarters. Not carrying her phone full of SHIELD secrets, not as a genetically-modified Inhuman, not with the knowledge she has about SHIELD's future. It'll be too dangerous. They'll never let her leave, protocol or no protocol.

"Can you- is there somewhere you can take me that's safe and off the radar? A motel, maybe?" she asks, and Coulson considers her for a moment, nods once.

"Agent," he says, gestures with the flashlight, and she follows him to his car.

"Where's your partner?" she asks curiously as he starts the car, lets herself take a sideways glance at him. Oh god, he's so  _young_. There's a softness to his face she doesn't recognize, no lines around his eyes, but it's still  _Phil_. He shrugs, looking a little shifty, and she narrows her own eyes. "You do  _have_ a partner, right? You'd usually get sent on a call-out like this with someone else?"

"Yeah..." he agrees, blushes, and Daisy grins.

"Oh my god, this wasn't an official SHIELD mission. You came out here on your own because you were  _curious_."

"There was an anomaly called in about an hour ago!" he says defensively. "Some guy calling from a payphone, said he saw a weird light coming from the carpark. He said it was aliens. Headquarters decided it wasn't worth investigating."

"And you ignored your SO and decided to check it out anyway," Daisy smirks. "Rebel rookie field agent Phil Coulson, on the mission."

"I'm not a  _rookie_ ," Coulson says, "I've got five years experience in the field."

"Sorry," Daisy says. "My mistake." Then she smiles wider, gives him another look. "Phil," she says, "how old are you?"

"I'm twenty-five," he says, frowns, shifts gear, and Daisy  _grins_ , because she's in a world where she's  _older than Phil Coulson_ , and when she gets back, she is never going to let him live it down.

 

+

 

He pulls into a garage next to a small surburban house, and Daisy's confused. "This isn't a motel," she says, and he shakes his head.

"No, I figured you could stay with me," he says. "If that's okay, I mean. I have a guest room."

"Yeah," Daisy agrees. "Sure." She needs to refresh herself on Protocol 618, but she's pretty sure that although it doesn't  _outright say_ "in the case of unexpected time travel, don't stay in the guest room of the Director of SHIELD's twenty-five-year-old version of himself", the general  _gist_ of the instructions could be read as meaning that in spirit. She doesn't know what else to do.  _Hey Phil, I know you're being helpful, here, and I can't get SHIELD involved so staying with you is certainly useful in that regard, but we know each other in the future, so you probably shouldn't learn anything about me now_? Smooth, Daisy, she thinks, sighs, gets out of the car.

"Uh, so, are you hungry?" he asks, smoothing a hand nervously down his tie, and she nods, looks around his living room curiously as she tugs off her jacket. "Well, look, I'll just - make us some dinner, then, and you can, uh, make yourself comfortable."

"Thanks," she says, curls up in one of the armchairs, waits until she can hear him preparing food in the kitchen before she pulls out her phone again. There's no signal, but she didn't expect there to be - hard to get signal when the cell towers won't be built for another ten years - and she still has all her files, at least.

She re-reads Protocol 618, doesn't learn anything new.  _Keep the time travel mechanism close to hand_ , it says, and, well, shit, because the wormhole machine hasn't come back with her. She just needs to find a scientist who can rebuild it. It'll be easy. She has photographs on her phone and everything.

It might not be that easy, she thinks, and sighs, turns off her phone, leans her head back against the chair. Coulson's house is small, uncluttered, with clean lines, but she can see how it's similar to his office. There are a few collectibles she recognizes, which is deeply weird. If she carved her name into one of them, would it change the future, she wonders. Would it send a message to Coulson, tell him she's safe?

"Dinner's ready," Coulson says, and she gets up, joins him in the kitchen. "It's not much, just tomato soup and grilled cheese, but I've got a secret recipe for the grilled cheese. Don't ask, I will not disclose." 

"Oh my god, Phil, you dork, you say that every time," Daisy says without thinking, smirks at him the way she'd smirk at Coulson, because his voice is so familiar and she's heard him say it so often, and then she freezes, realizing what she's just done. Coulson looks startled. "Sorry, I- ignore that, okay, thanks for cooking, Agent, this looks great."

There's a long pause, and Daisy takes a few bites of her soup and grilled cheese sandwich - and seriously, it  _is_ good, it's just as good as it's always been - and then Coulson clears his throat.

"We know each other," he says. "In the future."

"Yeah," Daisy says, because it's pretty obvious. 

"We know each other well," he continues. "If I cook for you."

"We work for SHIELD," Daisy says, "that's how we know each other," and she's trying to cut off his deductions. He knows she works for SHIELD already, and letting him know he sticks with the organization, that's not so bad, right.

"But I don't-" Coulson says, pauses, frowns down at his soup. God,  _god_ , Daisy's not used to this, he hasn't learned to control his face, to wear the blank and competent mask of a career agent, and she can see every thought he's having. It's endearing just how young he feels. "I don't make grilled cheese for just anyone," he says after a moment of thought, looks up at her, and the way his eyes are so wide, Daisy is suddenly reminded of a baby deer.

"Phil," she tells him firmly, "you know you can't try and work it out. The more you know, the more the future could be affected, and we've got to protect it, right."

"Right," he says, sounding a little disappointed. "Well, I'm glad you like it, anyway. You want another?"

"I wouldn't say no," Daisy says, leans back in her chair, and she doesn't think she's imagining the way Coulson's gaze slides from her face down to her shoulders, just for a moment.

 

+

 

He lends her a pair of flannel pajamas, and the next day, they're both up early, eating breakfast in the kitchen before they get dressed.

"I've been thinking about how to get you into SHIELD," he says seriously, passing her a cup of coffee. "I think we're going to have to take it to my SO, okay. I just don't have the Level access to get you the information you want."

"What Level are you?" Daisy asks, sipping her coffee. "And who's your SO?"

"Level Three," Coulson says. "My SO's Nick Fury, I don't know if you've heard of him."

"I can work with that," Daisy says, and Coulson nods, once.

"Sir," he says to Fury. "This is Agent Darcy. She's invoked Protocol 618."

"Oh, come  _on_ ," Fury says, and Daisy waits. " _Time travel_? Seriously? We only wrote that damn protocol because some Level 4 agent had been reading too much science fiction, it's never actually  _happened_."

"Now it has," Daisy says. "Agent Fury, a word? Alone?"

"Yeah, alright," he agrees, his eye fixed on her. "Coulson, give us a minute."

"Yes, sir," Coulson says crisply, leaves the room, and Daisy looks at Fury more intently. She could tell him about the HYDRA infiltration, change it before it happens. She can't.

"I can't speak in front of him," she says, "because we're working together, in the future, and I can't give him more information than he already has. I can't change time like that. But I'm from 2015. I can't give you any proof, except for the information in this phone, which I think you probably shouldn't see anyway because it will totally wig out the future and change everything, like, hugely, but I need you to keep this off SHIELD radar. I need to not be noticed."

"Okay," Fury says. "What else do you need?"

"Access to ... what is it, ARPANET? Has SHIELD got an internal classified network? And I need to talk to whichever physicists you have working in the Sandbox or the Triskelion. Especially quantum physicists. Maybe Tony Stark, if he's available."

"I'll see what I can do," Fury says, "but access like that, you might get noticed."

"Who's the Director?" Daisy asks, and Fury gives her an odd look.

"Alexander Pierce," he tells her, and it takes everything she has to keep her face neutral.  _He's HYDRA_ , she thinks, oh  _god_ , she could stop it all here. It's September 1989. Her mother has already been taken apart by Whitehall, and her dad is falling to pieces searching for her, and she's a baby in an orphanage right now, being protected by secret SHIELD protocols. She could fix it all. She  _can't_.

"I'll stay out of SHIELD," she says instead. "Give Phil the information. I'll work on it from home."

"Agent Darcy," Fury says, gives her a searching look. "Do we make it?"

"You know I can't answer that," Daisy says, but she aches to.  _You and Coulson, you're two of the best agents in SHIELD_ , she thinks,  _you keep SHIELD together_ , and hopes her presence in the past won't change everything.

 

+

 

After three days, Daisy's beginning to get discouraged. Coulson's brought home what he can - classified files on SHIELD tech that mean nothing to Daisy - and snuck her into headquarters late one night to access the internal network. It's nothing like the internet she's used to. If she's stuck here for good, at least she'll make a killing helping to invent the Web.

Finding physicists is harder, especially doing it without SHIELD noticing, but they try, setting up clandestine meetings and showing them the photographs of the device. Nobody can make any sense of it, and even if Daisy had been paying attention to Mack and Fitz's evaluation of the tech, there's too much she doesn't know.

Tony Stark is a complete bust, but that's not so surprising. Daisy's mad she ever idolized the guy, because he turns out to be one hundred percent an  _asshole_.

Phil keeps looking at her from across the dinner table, across the room, and she can see on his face that he's trying to figure her out. How does he know her? What do they mean to each other? It's a question he shouldn't be asking himself, and she shouldn't still  _be_ here, in his space, rewriting his history, but she's got nowhere else to go.

He takes her to buy clothes, stone-wash jeans that Daisy thinks of immediately as mom jeans. Hideous button-downs and pastel sweaters. Ugh, Daisy thinks, she's going to have to live through scrunchies all over again. And  _bootcut_ jeans, and Britney Spears, and a world where she can't fight to protect anyone.

Living with Phil is too, too easy. She's done it for years, of course, but in this suburban house where Phil is everywhere, it's  _different_ from living on a base. She gets used to him in the sight of his pajamas, loves the way he strips out of his suits at the end of the day, changes into jeans and soft-looking sweaters. When did he, does he, stop doing that, when did he start being so buttoned up? His suits aren't as nice as they will be, Daisy thinks, but when she watches him tug off his tie, roll up his sleeves, that's all the same. (Except his hands are both solid flesh, his forearms lines of smooth muscle tapering down to elegant wrists, and there's no scarring, no join where it meets a black robotic hand.) She reaches out without thinking, strokes her fingertips down the inside of his arm to his wrist, and Coulson pauses, makes a soft noise like he's breathing out a sigh.

"I love it when you roll your sleeves up like this," she says, her fingers still pressed to the pulse in his wrist, and then she stops, catches herself, because Phil can't  _know_ this.

The way he looks at her, it says plainly that he already does. It's the same face, the same expression, and Daisy can see Coulson so clearly. She pulls her hand back, picks up another file, flicks through it without taking in what she's reading.

"Darcy," Phil says, his voice very low, but he doesn't say anything else.

 

+

 

Daisy even starts cooking, occasionally, making things he's taught her, or things she knows he likes. The second time it happens, he comes into the kitchen, still in his shirtsleeves, and leans in to look at what she's chopping, puts his hand lightly on the small of her back.

"You don't have to cook for me," he tells her, and she shrugs.

"I'm not cooking for you. I'm cooking for us."

"Okay," he concedes. "Do you need any help?"

"I'm good," Daisy says. "Thanks. How was your day?"

"Ugh," Phil complains. "I've been assigned with this guy, Agent Sitwell, and he's perfectly competent but god, I hate the guy unreasonably." Daisy laughs, slides the chopped carrots and celery and onion into the pot, accepts the beer he passes her. That'll change, she thinks, Sitwell will be one of your favorite people, and you'll have breakfast in diners together and run SHIELD with the quiet, efficient, affectionate ruthlessness of career agents, and one day he'll turn out to have been HYDRA all along.

"Well," she says instead, sips her beer. "That sounds frustrating."

"Yeah," Coulson agrees. "What are you making for dinner?"

"Nothing special," Daisy says. "Just chicken pot pie."

Coulson pauses, when he takes his first mouthful, looks up at her suddenly wary all over again. "This is my mother's recipe," he says, hushed, and Daisy looks away.

"It's just pot pie," she tells him, "there are like, a million recipes out there, Coulson."

"No, but I- I taught you how to make this, didn't I."

"You will," Daisy says, and thinks about how it happened, how it will happen. Coulson dusted in flour, arguing with her over her knife technique, deftly chopping vegetables. His hand pressed to her back as he reaches in, stirs the broth. She'd wanted to kiss him, wanted to push him back against the kitchen bench and breathe him in and unbutton his shirt. She'd rolled her eyes, instead, pretended she wasn't listening to his careful measuring of herbs and spices, but she knows this recipe by heart like she'll know Coulson by heart, someday.

"What are we to each other?" Phil asks again, and Daisy closes her eyes, doesn't answer.

 

+

 

It's two months before she realizes it, two months before she lets herself believe.

"I'm never going to get back," Daisy says, defeated, and Coulson closes the manila file, reaches across the table, brushes his fingers over the back of her hand.

"I don't want you to lose hope," he says quietly, "but you're welcome to stay."

"I can't stay forever," Daisy says, frowns as she thinks of where she could go. What would happen if she went to Afterlife? She doesn't even know where it  _is_ , but Gordon's there, Gordon's  _alive_ , in this year, in this time, and she could just say it.  _Gordon, help_ , and he'd be there, would take her to a safe place. Her mom would be there, eventually. If Daisy never goes back to the future, will Afterlife be safe, or will they be caught in a loop of destruction? She has no idea. Her mother's not her mother, there. The Daisy whose mother is alive is a year old in an orphanage.

"Darcy," Coulson says. "I meant, forever. For as long as you want." She looks up, catches the look on his face.

"I can't," she sighs. "You'll miss me, in the future."

"Are we-" he asks, his eyes hopeful, and she shakes her head.

"It's not like that. We work together. I'm-" She stops. She doesn't know  _what_ she is to Coulson.

"I don't know what he's thinking," Phil tells her. "What  _I'm_ thinking. I mean, you're so..."

"I'm so what?" Daisy asks, and Phil pulls his hand back.

"I'm sorry," he says, "I didn't mean- I just- you're so beautiful, Darcy, and so smart, and funny, and just. I'm an idiot, if I'm ignoring all of that. There's nothing, no mission, so important that I could ignore what you are."

"Phil," Daisy says, sits forward in her chair, grabs him by the tie and pulls him closer. "My name's not Darcy."

"I know," he tells her, confused. "Protocol 618. I know. You're protecting the integrity of the future."

"Yeah," Daisy breathes, leans in until her mouth's brushing his. "My name's Skye."

" _Skye_ ," Coulson says, kisses her gentle and tentative, and she grazes her teeth across his lip, deepens the kiss until he's gasping against her mouth. " _Skye_ , fuck,  _Skye_."

"You should take me to bed, Agent Coulson," she orders, and when he does, it's almost everything that she wants. It's Coulson's lips on hers and Coulson's voice breathing her name (one of her names) (it's the name he says when he slips, and Phil says it in almost the same tone). It's Coulson's hands on her body, and Coulson moving against her, gasping and clutching at her and pushing, slowly, in. It's Coulson's mouth, wet against her clit, and she's been thinking about it for so long, she comes with a shout after what feels like thirty seconds or less.

It's Coulson's shoulder that she's resting on afterwards, and Coulson's chest that she's stroking her fingers across, and it's so, so almost right.

He doesn't have a scar still raised across his heart. He doesn't know about her powers, or her family, or the alien formula that runs (will run) through both of them. He doesn't know any of the history between them that's built all of this, and they could build their own history, Daisy knows, but it's not the same.

He caresses his fingers across her side, touches her bullet scars gently.

"What happened?" he asks, very quiet, and she deflects.

"Happened before I joined SHIELD," she tells him, distracts him with kisses, and she's not lying, not really. She was a consultant when she died, no SHIELD badge. That only came later.

 

+

 

"I need to show you something," she says a few days later. "Can we take a road trip?"

"Sure," Coulson says, confused, but he touches her hair, kisses her cheek, as he passes her a mug of coffee, and Daisy could be so happy with this. This could be her life. Perhaps Phil wouldn't die in New York, if she stayed. Perhaps she could join SHIELD the usual way, come up through the Academy and the ranks. She could marry Phil, wear his mother's ring, have children with him. They could retire from SHIELD before HYDRA topples it, go and take up jobs as history and compsci professors at some state university far away from trouble. They could be  _normal_.

Her coffee mug trembles on the table in front of her, and Daisy blinks, realizes all the plates are rattling. It's been a long time since she lost control. It's a reminder. She's never going to be normal, not like that, and god, it's not what she wants.

"It's a bit of a drive," she says apologetically, "it's in LA. I wouldn't, but- it's important, okay?"

"Yeah," Phil says. "Of course."

They take Lola, and Phil drives, and Daisy holds herself back from saying,  _did you know? In the future, your car flies. It's really cool. You're really cool._

"It's just up here," she says, and of course the diner's not there, not yet, but the alleyway is. It's worse than it will be; this area hasn't been gentrified yet. She gets out of the car anyway, stands for a moment, and Coulson joins her.

"You wanted to show me... a sketchy alleyway?" he asks, wraps his arms around her, presses his lips to the side of her neck, and she laughs.

"Yeah, it..." She turns around to face him, looks into his eyes. "If I... go, if I  _go back_ , if something happens and I disappear  _back_ , Phil, come find me here, okay? You'll know when."

"Okay," Coulson says. "I'll find you, Skye."

"I know," she tells him. "I know you will." She stretches up to kiss him, and he pulls her in, kisses her back, cradles the back of her head, and yeah, this could be it, Daisy thinks. She could be Skye, again. She could be Skye, with Coulson, for the rest of this life.

They break apart, because kissing is nice but this alleyway really is  _super_ sketchy, and Coulson gets back into the car, smiles sunnily at her. Daisy lingers, just a moment, looks down the alley, imagines her van, and then she's in a bubble of light, everything shining around her.

"No," she says, "no,  _no_ ," and as the light fades, the first person Daisy sees is Coulson.

"Hi," he says, softly enough that the others can't hear, "I told you I'd find you," and oh,  _oh_ , this is the life Daisy's going to have, with Coulson, and this is better, this is  _better_.

 

+ 

 

Coulson disappears to his office as soon as they get back to base, and Daisy is hammered with questions from Fitz and Simmons and Mack that she does her best to answer, but everything in her wants to just go and  _find him_. She hasn't seen him in months. She's seen him every day. 

He's sitting at his desk, looking thoughtful, and Daisy closes the door, walks over to him until she's close, within touching distance, and doesn't touch.

"You knew," Daisy says. "Phil, you  _knew_. You knew it was me all along."

"I suspected," Coulson says, quiet. "It's been a long time. I waited for so long, I thought the future  _must_ have changed. I mean, I, I  _died_. When I met you, I didn't- I didn't recognize you, at first. I knew it was you, on the Rising Tide podcasts. I could hear it in your voice. But when we opened the door of your van- you looked different. Younger."

"Oh," Daisy says, "oh," and she can't help it, she touches his cheek, and Coulson draws a shuddering breath, leans into it. "Why'd you wait?" she asks after a moment. "I mean- it's a time machine. You could have picked me up from anywhere. From where I first landed. You could have made it so we never met."

"But we did meet," Coulson says, like it's obvious. "And- it was selfish. I wanted it. I wanted  _you_. I wanted those memories to be real."

"They had to be," Daisy says, trying to puzzle it out. "You had to know where to find me to find me." It's too difficult, it's a paradox, a causal loop that she can't untangle.

"When you cut your hair," he says. "I knew. I knew it'd be soon."

"Twenty five years," Daisy breathes. "For me, it was today. You waited so long for me, Phil."

"It was worth it," he tells her, looks up at her, and she leans down closer, presses her forehead against his. "It was worth the wait."

"I missed you," she says. "In 1989. I missed  _you_  even while I was with you."

"But he was me," Coulson argues. "Younger. With more hair. Fewer scars."

"Mmm," Daisy agrees. "He  _was_ you. But he's not you. I don't miss him. I want you. I've always wanted you."

"Oh," Coulson murmurs, as if he's realizing, " _oh_. Daisy, I-" _  
_

"Shut up," Daisy says, "and kiss me already."

"We could have built a life together," Coulson says later, lazily dragging his hand up her spine and back down, and Daisy wraps her arms around him.

"We're going to," she says, "here," and this is what it's going to be, this is what it will be, and this is everything they've been waiting for, across time.


End file.
